The iPhone 4 offers a great opportunity for any visual artist to do what he loves the most regardless of his whereabouts. If you own an iPhone 4 or an iPod Touch (4G) you basically have an entire virtual art studio in the palm of your hand. In this article I will cover the most important elements of becoming an artist on the go. So without any further ado let's get right to it, and start by having a brief look at the hardware.

iPhones And iPods First

As for drawing and painting, the iPod Touch (4G) and the iPhone 4 are equally good. They have the same gesture features and the same 960x640 326ppi capacitive touch screen, and they both support a wide variety of drawing and painting apps. We'll have a closer look at some of these later in this article. Let's move on.

The Stylus

If you are not planning on painting and drawing with your fingers you'll need one of these. I have tried and tested three of the most popular styluses, and this is my humble verdict: The Griffin stylus is quite sturdy but is way too short in my opinion. Apart from that it works as intended. The nibs cannot be replaced. The Pogo Sketch Pro has by far the best feel and length, but the rubber nibs seem quite fragile and they need to be replaced often. The Wacom Bamboo Stylus is really a high quality tool. It has replaceable nibs just like the Pogo Sketch Pro does. However, it has one major flaw. Pressing down too hard while drawing can cause the metal of the pen to hit and scratch the screen which I unfortunately managed to do myself during testing.

Choices, choices, choices

So which one should you go for? Well, the Griffin stylus has to go. It works but is not very comfortable using. This leaves you with two equally good choices; The Wacom Bamboo Stylus costing approx. $40 US in the Wacom Store, and the Pogo Sketch Pro costing Approx. $25 US in the Ten One Design webstore.

Drawing and Painting Apps

Up first is ArtStudio. This app is like the iPhone/iPod equivalent of Photoshop. It's not only for drawing and painting but is a fullblown image editor with a vast range of editing functions. Here are the main features:

Supports many canvas sizes

Make custom brushes

Tool for adding text

Photoshop file export

Layers and layer masks

A wide range of filters

Shapes: lines, circles etc

Layer and image transformation

Color/brightness adjustments

Undo and redo

...and many more

Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile

Next up we have Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile. It's a dedicated drawing, sketching and painting app with a clean stripped down interface with tons of brush types plus all the usual functions needed for painting and drawing. The main features are:

Fullscreen workspace

Max. 6 layers supported

Custom canvas sizes

45 brush presets

Extensive custom brush maker

Undo and redo

Layer duplication

Smooth brush stroking

Simulated pressure sensitivity

Photoshop file export

...and of course many more

Which App Should You Go For?

My recommendations are these: If you need a clean interface where drawing and painting is your main focus you should choose Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile. If you, besides drawing and painting, do a lot of image editing (like photo editing) you should go for ArtStudio. But here is what I truly think. Since they are very cheap to obtain, get both! Whatever you decide you get plenty of value for your money with these two apps.

Some Final Thoughts

Needless to say painting and drawing on such small screens is not like working on a 20" x 30" canvas, but it's a really great way for getting ideas down quickly, and even to do fully colored digital art works. I have found it quite useful for doing some quick sketches and drawings, and then later import them into Photoshop continuing from where I had left off.

Sketchbook App Screenshot

Wait, there's more!

That's pretty much all there is too it. To end this article I have supplied links to both ArtStudio and Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile.